Knorr et al. (2005) concluded that soil organic carbonpools with longer turnover times are more sensitive to temperature. We showthat this conclusion is equivocal, largely dependent on their specificselection of data and does not persist when the data set of Kätterer et al. (1998) is analysed in a more appropriateway. Further, we analyse how statistical properties of the model parametersmay interfere with correlative analyses that relate the Q10 of soilrespiration with the basal rate, where the latter is taken as a proxy forsoil organic matter quality. We demonstrate that negative parametercorrelations between Q10-values and base respiration rates arestatistically expected and not necessarily provide evidence for a highertemperature sensitivity of low quality soil organic matter. Consequently, wepropose it is premature to conclude that stable soil carbon is moresensitive to temperature than labile carbon.
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